212 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
great bat soars high, well above the tree-tops, where 
it can prey upon the high-flying great moths. It is 
one of the most beautiful, as well as the rarest, of our 
bats, being found in the East only in the spring or 
fall migration. It wears a magnificent furry coat as 
beautiful as that of the silver fox, but, like all of its 
race, it is cursed with the homeliest face ever worn by 
an animal. It is this hobgoblin face which, in spite of 
a blameless life and useful habits, makes the flitter- 
mouse, whatever its species, universally hated. 
However, handsome is as handsome does, and the 
boy who kills a bat has killed one of our most useful 
animals and deserves to be bitten by all the mos- 
quitoes, and bumped by all the June bugs, and crawled 
over by all the cockroaches, and to have his clothes 
corrupted by all the moths, that the dead bat would 
have eaten if it had been allowed to live. 
After I had supposedly finished this chapter I 
was reading it aloud at the dinner-table to the de- 
fenceless Band, one Sunday afternoon about two 
o’clock, on a freezing day in December. Just as I was 
in the midst of the masterpiece, one of my audience 
suddenly woke up and said, “‘There’s a bat!”’ Sure 
enough, outside, in the glass-enclosed porch, was 
flying a large brown house-bat. Back and forth it 
went through the freezing air, as swiftly as if it were 
summer. I was much touched by this beautiful 
tribute to my authorship, and went out and managed 
to catch my visitor when he alighted. The bat how- 
ever was ungrateful enough to bite the hand that 
had praised him, and I will end this account by writ- 
